


'I am not a shackle'

by Morbane



Category: Sunshine - Robin McKinley
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, F/M, Handcuffs, Multi, Sex Magic, Sexual Content, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 18:09:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"I am not a rope around your neck or-- or a shackle around your ankle! So-- so go away!"</em>
</p><p>Rae sets Constantine free from a shackle. Constantine returns the favour. His timing leaves something to be desired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'I am not a shackle'

**Author's Note:**

  * For [norgbelulah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/gifts).



It was a dumb idea, but it wasn’t my dumbest ever. As a matter of fact, I would like to state that there was a kind of thinking involved that can’t be blamed on my brain at all.

I was less tired than usual. Charlie may have been joking about sending Mel and me to the Catskills, but I was getting my wish to get a little farther out of the bakery whenever I walked out the door.

The official excuse for my reduced hours was winter schedule; the unofficial excuse that I was suffering a mutiny just as Charlie had when we’d made him stick to being maître d’ and wine steward and elevated Mel to head chef. I wasn’t poking too hard to get past the excuses. I didn’t think there was a version of the last summer that I could ever get straight with my nearest and dearest. So if they wanted to give me a few white lies, I didn’t have much ground for complaint.

Instead, I had grounds for going home with Mel more often than not. That was nice. There are very specific ways it was nice. I’m a baker; I’d be the last person to complain about vanilla, including vanilla sex. But there’s this thing where if you get out of a groove with someone, you tend to start again kind of at the basics, with what you both know best. Fall out of the groove, rinse, repeat. With the rinsing and repeating it all got a little too _clean_.

I’d been preoccupied, that summer. I’d been tired. All my hard days’ nights had started to cut into the afternoon delight part of things. Mel didn’t push, because Mel never pushed, and if I thought about it that way I could ignore the fact that he was probably being patient for _reasons_.

And he wouldn’t have pushed about doing other things than missionary and cowgirl; he wouldn’t have pushed using dripping honey into using hot dripping honey; he _definitely_ , again for reasons, wouldn’t have pushed on handcuffs. So I had to.

It’s not the coy ‘What will do now you’ve caught me, sirrah’ kind of stuff that I like, so much. I don't go in for a lot of talk during sex when you can _look_ what you mean. Or pull. Or suck. And it’s not force either, so much as, well, enthusiasm. If you’re going to get carried away, with me – which I recommend, by the way – then you might as well have a few extra things to do it with.

Okay, the handcuffs were slightly out of character for me, and this is where the dumb part of the not-thinking comes in. I guess I had a point to prove. About how much of the summer was _over_.

Mel said, “Are you sure?” and I flicked a tea-towel at his arm.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

So Mel closed the kitchen for the night – hell, it was coming on nine, and the November crowd was always light – and I left the dough to rise, and we rode his Genet home. He was tricky at the lights and over the Whiteout potholes, shaking me about more than he had to, a tease of shaking me loose, and I pulled in tighter to him, as if my hands could sink through his jacket and into his skin.

We ended up on the bed the way I’d hoped, me with my wrists up by my head and Mel kneeling over me, his torso framed by my elbows. What I like best about handcuffs is the way you have to brace. I might not have a lot of leverage to arch up with, but that was the challenge. Mel started out slow, with half-thrusts I tried to sink deeper into me, and gradually leaned down. His breaths were coming rougher and rougher. So were mine.

I licked up the side of his jaw, dragging my teeth after. I braced his cheek with my cheek so I could feel his half-laughing _ha_ that I liked better than a moan. 

It was going really damn _right_ , and then it suddenly went wrong.

It was the moment when Mel pressed so close into me that the handcuff chains went slack. It was that feeling – of shackles around my wrist but nothing behind them, nothing I dared test – that stopped me like cold water. Mel gasped and then exhaled, roughly, but I was no longer with him. I felt isolated, as if there were nothing human near me at all and Mel was a stranger. Or, forget isolation: I was suddenly utterly terrified.

If I spoke, it was a breath. I’m not sure I did speak. Kind of funny, to think I didn’t have to.

 _If you call me, I will come_.

Like ozone after a flash, there was a smell in the air of vampire in the room, and it was as I was processing that that I caught up to the fact that the handcuffs had clicked open. There was pressure, blink-quick: I had the feeling Constantine had kissed my forehead. I was falling backwards on the bed – it had rails rather than a headboard, and my head hit them with a dull clunk like a broken marimba. 

“Hey. Sunshine. Sunshine. Whoa. Are you okay?”

Mel could tell that the answer was _no_. He pulled away, resting just a hand on my upper arm. He was flushed and sweating and gorgeous, and I could only look up at him with a something-just-happened screwed-up look on my face.

“I just… um… handcuffs,” I said lamely, feeling stupid. And hella embarrassed. And scared, because even though I was no longer restrained, and with Mel, who was kind of my safe place nowadays, my mind was still running a terror circuit in the background as if I were a combox and it was the unstoppable defrag routine.

I hugged Mel, slowly, and we sat up, slowly. I trailed my hand across Mel's chest to say _it's okay, you don't have to follow me_ , pulled a shirt on, and went to get a cup of water. It seemed like the best way to deal. My hands were shaking.

Oh yes, and embarrassment doesn’t really cover, “I’m sorry, I accidentally invited a vampire into your house during sex.”

How had he managed to get in? Was the direst-need bond thing between us just that powerful? I’d thought it was more like voicemail than, well, rubbing a lamp. (Okay, I really didn't need to be thinking about rubbing right now.) But I still didn’t really have a handle on vampire transport.

I put my hands to my temples and sat on the floor.

I could feel Constantine now, the way I had when he'd met me at my home before the last fight with Bo. He was standing by the stairs that led upstairs just outside the master bedroom stair. I half-saw him, a mental image that somehow mapped to reality. He was standing still.

Mel’s hand found mine, laced our fingers together, and touched the same spot on my forehead. I caught my breath.

Mel said, “Someone else is here.”

I said, “Yes.”

Mel put his dressing gown on. “A pretty weird someone else.”

“Yes.”

“Not a type I’ve met before, myself.”

It was a deliberate kind of waiting, this. He was saying, okay, go on, explain.

Or maybe I was meant to be listening to something. Like: was that a joke? What other ‘types’ had he met? Being in the Voodoo Wars didn’t necessarily get you familiar with all of the zoology. Many on the anti-human side just cast curses from behind the trees.

"They'll have trouble getting _out_ of my wards, Sunshine," Mel said. He looked to read my expression, but my face was locked up as tight as a casino safe. He sighed.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said. That was a bit off-script. Mel didn’t go in for stories. Mel especially didn’t go in for stories about the Others, and I couldn’t see what else he was going to tell. I didn't usually challenge Mel on habits like that, but I love stories, so once, I had. Stories had a way of summoning, Mel had said. And that was all.

"I ran away from home at age fourteen," he said slowly. 

I knew that.

"And then... for a while, I was somewhere else," Mel said, "and I fulfilled my bargain with the Oak, and he helped me run away again."

I caught my breath. One of Mel's oldest tattoos was the hourglass. I had assumed it had its dominant meaning of not-running-out-of-time. But a less popular benefit of the hourglass tattoo was that it tied you to the time you were in. Less popular because most people didn't need to worry about skipping a hundred years of so by magic. 

Not many people, by population count, had ever been with the True Fae.

"Not all of my friends are human," Mel said. "This someone else, Sunshine, are they your friend?"

"Yes," I whispered. 

Mel was still staring intently at me. "Reigning cats and dogs and rebel _angels_ ," he said. "It's 'Connor' from the lake and No Town. He's not just your friend, is he, Sunshine? He's everything." Meaning: everything important from the last six months, I guessed, but I choked out a horrified giggle for the romantic implications.

Except maybe Mel had meant it that way, because he said, "Sweetheart," as though he were sympathising with me about something.

I was discovering new ways to be embarrassed. My face was as hot as, well, everything else had been, earlier. Well, it was a cold night. I suppose I was maintaining some sort of equilibrium.

Mel said, "Come out."

There was a vampire in the doorway.

My vampire.

I was expecting Mel to flinch, but he didn't.

"How did you get in?" he asked Constantine.

Constantine looked at me.

"I let him out of a shackle once," I said, a bit wildly.

"For reasons that were entirely your own, I take it," Mel said.

Constantine didn't move. His eyes narrowed very slightly, relaxed. It might have been a vampire version of a shrug.

"Shiva _wept_ , Mel," I said. "Can't you just let him go?"

"Can _you_?" Mel asked me.

Oh, gods and angels. This was Mel's stubborn side, and also Mel's protective side, which seemed to have teamed up for the moment. I just wanted this mess to go away - sorry, Constantine - so that I could finish my freak-out and get some sleep. Mel had leverage. He also had no fear. Why wasn't he scared of my vampire?

"No," I said shortly. "Common decency _and_ magic both agree that you don't cut your allies loose. Apparently."

Except that I had cut Con loose, technically, and that was what had started this, and my phrasing was _terrible_ today.

"Mr _Connor_ ," I said, "I am sorry. I did not mean... I am not in danger." And which had I endangered by introducing them to each other? Mel? Con? Both? Neither?

Mel did something very strange then. He pressed his fingertips into my forehead, withdrew his hand, stood up, and crossed to Constantine. He drew the same fingertips slowly, sensually, across Con's mouth. _Across the mouth of a vampire_. The tingle on my forehead vanished. If only all things we'd done to each other could be so undone.

"I... um," I said intelligently.

"I don't think," Mel said, "there are a lot of magical bonds that summon one half of the bond through space and wardings unless feelings are involved."

I could argue the point about shackles and sympathetic magic providing a boost, but he was probably right. I said, "Mel, this is getting intense."

"So has our alliance," Con said, surprising me. "It has gone beyond my experiences."

"You kissed _me_ ," I said childishly.

"Did you not want me to?" he returned.

I'd accidentally summoned a vampire into the bedroom during sex, my boyfriend seemed to have a better handle on the magical side of my attraction to said vampire than I did, and now the vampire was pinning the blame for the attraction (which had to be a little mutual) on me. This was hell in a handbasket. I finally lost my temper.

"Yes, I did!" I snarled. "I just thought we'd covered that already, and with far fewer words, back at _your_ place, which, by the way, would have been a much more private location than the present one! And you told me I didn't know what I was getting into, and that should have been that!"

Mel started laughing. This was not the time. Better than going quiet, I guess, which Constantine was now doing - it seemed that vampires went even stiller than the startled kind of stillness. 

"Be fair, Sunshine," Mel said, "he was probably right about that."

"Well, do you know any better?"

"Yes," Mel said, and Constantine touched his own lips, as if the feeling of the kiss returned still hovered there. It was... appealing.

Mel said quietly, "The Fae rule in their own places, but they play host to mortals, demons and others... each with their own powers and their own ideas of love. It's dangerous to break a fairy's heart and it's madness to go back on a promise. So there are the wise who know the game, the reckless who don't care, and the rest.

"The rest have a third party. Someone who speaks for each."

"A clean bearer of wishes," Con said. I remembered his description of himself, as an unclean vessel for the clean deer's blood.

"A witness," I said. _A voyeur_. I didn't like that idea; _definitely_ not my thing. "Mel, I need to talk to you alone."

Like that, Constantine was gone. I could sense him by the front door. Only so far, but far enough. "You always knew more about this than you were letting on," I said.

"I cared," Mel said.

"You never asked questions," I said. "I thought that was because you trusted me, not because you already knew."

"It's not about trust, Sunshine," Mel said. "It would have been my business, if you never came back... from some of your little walks in the dark."

"Bearing witness," he repeated.

"No," I said. "No pretending distance. You're with me or you're not. Stay with me."

Mel said, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'm sure."

He drew me in and kissed me, hard, his lips pressing mine open, his hands knotted in my back through my thin shirt. He pulled my face away from his, gently, so that he could grin into my eyes. Hand in hand, we stood on the stairs and called my vampire, and Mel delivered the same kiss to him.

Which was some sight. Mel is tall; Con was taller. Humans and vampires in embrace - non-deadly embrace - was not something my teenage reading had adequately prepared me for. In the vaguest of images, I'd imagined the vampire of the pair to be a looming, claw-fisted figure, and the human swooning half in despair and half in desire.

Mel was not swooning. Mel was calculated. In possession of himself, of the situation, of me, of Con.

We drew Con into the bedroom, Mel and I; he sat down on the side of the bed and we slid off his shirt together. Mel stroked down Con's sides, positioned himself behind him, drew fingertips across his neck. I kneeled between his knees and bent to his cock. 

Belatedly, it occurred to me that if Con could breathe at will, eat or not eat at will, and turn hot or cold at will, there might be other ways he could... cheat. By making it too easy for me, or too hard. (Er. Bad phrasing.) I tried to be unpredictable, moving my mouth between his balls and his cock, gliding a finger towards and around his anus, speeding up and slowing down. I wanted him to need to pay attention.

Meanwhile, Mel was licking, biting, kneading Con's back in slow circles for a while, drawing fingernails across his upper thighs, pulling Con's head back by his hair with one hand and curling into his throat with the other. Helping me. Providing distraction.

Without that overload of sensation, I think I would have doubted Con's final shudders, his sincerity. I rubbed gently in wide circles over his tip, drawing out the moment in which he was lost. 

Mel caught my wrist. Mel drew me up onto the bed and gave me his fiercest kisses yet. It was Mel who fucked me.

This time, I was not pulled up against the head of the bed by handcuffs, but I was still restrained: Con leaned over from above my head, arms pinning my arms and hands resting on my breasts, secure as iron and warm as a blazing fire. Mel wasn't making me work for the depth of his thrusts; there was no teasing now. And Con's hair fell around my face as he kissed me for the first time that night.

I came, and Mel kept going. I came again, with a kind of helpless howl, cut off by Con's lips again, and then Mel's gasp, which spared me from having to beg mercy.

"May I?" Con asked me, as Mel withdrew, a quirk to his lips that might have been humour. I nodded, and he slowly licked my thighs clean. I wondered where that fell between blood and tears.

He kissed me, and stood. "I am not free," he reminded Mel.

"All right," Mel said, and he turned, and whispered something to the walls of his house, to the listening walls. Con nodded. "Thank you," he said, and was gone.

Mel pulled me back towards him, my lips towards his lips. "Do you want that kiss, too?" I asked him.

"Only what you share, Sunshine."

So I did.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi norgbelulah, 
> 
> I had been wondering how the heck one would get these three characters together since you posed that prompt in 2011. I hope this works! Please forgive any lack of polish with the sex: I enjoyed writing it, but I write gen much more often.


End file.
